PvE Unholy dps

Since hitting level 90 and constantly reading forums and guides on all aspects of MoP I have cane to the conclusion that most people consider the Frost spec to be our highest Dps tree in this expansion.

Is there anyone playing unholy at level 90 PvE, in raids, heroics and even challenge modes. If so how do you feel it compares to frost?

Unholy is ok, but the gameplay is kind of slow. But you can still compete with frost on a lot of raid encounters tbh.

Is this because of the harder hitting execute phase with soul reaper as unholy? I think I've always preferred unholy to frost gameplay wise because it's less RNG feeling but I've mainly been tanking in MOP and was jus wondering about the dps aspect.

Is this because of the harder hitting execute phase with soul reaper as unholy? I think I've always preferred unholy to frost gameplay wise because it's less RNG feeling but I've mainly been tanking in MOP and was jus wondering about the dps aspect.

Played unholy for a while in dungeons yesterday and I have to say, it's great! It so fluid compared to frost, love the various damage outputs. I find it more forgiving and a lot less clunky than frost while keeping up numbers wise.

unholy is fine, if you have enough haste (6000+).
before in my opinion frost plays much smoother. and i'm unholy to the core.

Can you explain to me why 6000+ haste makes it smoother? Especially in comparison to frost. Smooth is the last word I would use when describing playing frost PvE. I just feel like your waiting for the 2 procs to happen to often, I like the procs to be a bonus rather than a necessity.

I'm Unholy, and I'm not switching to Frost because of being slightly better. Unholy is way more interesting to play than Frost.

Originally Posted by Arawyn87

Can you explain to me why 6000+ haste makes it smoother? Especially in comparison to frost. Smooth is the last word I would use when describing playing frost PvE. I just feel like your waiting for the 2 procs to happen to often, I like the procs to be a bonus rather than a necessity.

I have noticed it aswell, Unholy seems a bit clunky to me when not being above 5k Haste.

Unholy is much more fun to play and can deal just as much DPS as frost seriously.

Remember that you might hit for 30k... but there you gotta add your pet's dmg and your dots (dealing more damage than as frost obviously)... so your average 120k oblitarate is like 5k more damage than your total unholy damage per second.

Unholy actually excels in some fights more than others currently in MV. One of the reasons are - for fights like Elegon and Feng the Accursed - when the rest of the melee (including Frost DKs) have to get off the boss to properly execute mechanics, Unholy still has a large chunk of it's DPS still on the boss ticking away (Dots, Pet, and Gargoyle). Unholy also has amazing execute phases aswell. It's not uncommon for UH DKs to hit 300k+ soul reaper procs many times on the boss.

In my raid, we have an UH DK that goes head to head with me, and we give each other some constructive competition, so I know that even though UH is "simmed" lower, your DPS is really what you make it.

Unholy actually excels in some fights more than others currently in MV.

Exactly. If you look at raidbots, unholy's spec score is actually a lot higher than frost's, but its sample size is only 17% as large. This is largely because most people only play Unholy where it excels; on Elegon and (to a lesser extent) Will of the Emperor.

Note that even unholy has 1000 samples in raidbots now, which is a large enough sample size to be meaningful, and since unholy is widely seen as inferior to frost most people aren't playing it, which introduces preference bias. Really the two specs are very close on fights that aren't Elegon.

Me personally I hate frost. I don't do hard core progression so I see no reason to change. Sure I'll min/max my unholy spec to squeeze out of it what I can, however, why should I play something I hate? If you enjoy something play it. It's your $15.00 imo. :-D

Unholy's DPS isn't bad in any sense- as people have said, the execute damage especially is great- but most fight mechanics on their own tend to favor Frost. Frost has better ranged attacks, easier target-swapping, more burst damage/less ramp-up timing, less reliance on pet AI and all-around has more flexibility than Unholy does, really.
I personally love Unholy, but mechanically it's hit a hard spot right now, since all we do now is wait for/ramp-up to the big guns (wait for Sudden Doom procs to use Dark Transformation, wait for Death and Decay to come off cooldown, wait for Execute phase to hit Soul Reaper...). Haste eases this by giving us more Sudden Doom procs and less rune-downtime to smooth this out, but otherwise, we're just sitting around waiting for something- anything- to come off cooldown.
Hence, the frequent use of the term "clunky".

No, Im pretty sure he was responding to my comment about how hard Soul Reaper hit with just a 463 weapon. His point is that more weapon damage has little effect on Soul Reaper damage. My counter point was the strength gain.

Originally Posted by Leviatharan

Unholy's DPS isn't bad in any sense- as people have said, the execute damage especially is great- but most fight mechanics on their own tend to favor Frost. Frost has better ranged attacks, easier target-swapping, more burst damage/less ramp-up timing, less reliance on pet AI and all-around has more flexibility than Unholy does, really.
I personally love Unholy, but mechanically it's hit a hard spot right now, since all we do now is wait for/ramp-up to the big guns (wait for Sudden Doom procs to use Dark Transformation, wait for Death and Decay to come off cooldown, wait for Execute phase to hit Soul Reaper...). Haste eases this by giving us more Sudden Doom procs and less rune-downtime to smooth this out, but otherwise, we're just sitting around waiting for something- anything- to come off cooldown.
Hence, the frequent use of the term "clunky".

Its not nearly as bad as ppl have made it out to be. The only situation that Unholy truly does struggle on is target switching.